1-800 Suicide
Sunday, October 10, 2010 at 3:25PM 
Right; so the Best Of’s are all finished now and it’s time to start the new feature, which is called Hip-Hop Classics. This will be taking a look at some of the essential tracks which make this genre so special to me and millions of other people around the world. The majority of the writing comes courtesy of Neil Kulkarni, but I shall be making my own changes/amendments along the way, which should hopefully make it a more enjoyable read. This should be an educational feature where you will learn things about some of your favourite artists, be able to reminisce on forgotten classics and maybe find some music that you have never heard before. First up are the Gravediggaz who were behind one of the most controversial and under-rated in the history of Hip-Hop, Six Feet Deep.
“The only one to escape was number Six, he went home/Sat in the tub and slit his wrists, yeah, more graves to dig…”
Of course, “horrorcore”, as the crush of hardcore rap and gothic imagery that Gravediggaz invented was christened by the press, was always a joke, a non-event, a journalistic phrase in search of a place of real reference. It is now used with some fondness, partly for the way it instantly recalls the Gravediggaz’ unblinking and ridicule-tempting emergence into the light of day but also because it really does sum up the unique nature of what occurred on their debut LP Niggamortis (called Six Feet Deep by nervous American distributors. A minor hit, whose singles grazed the charts, the album had a unique appeal that rested on Gravediggaz’ timeliness. After grunge gad reinvigorated rock by tuning down the positivist elements and focusing wholly on its nihilism, so Gravediggaz’ brought a gloom and despondency to hardcore Hip-Hop that it never had before. These weren’t rappers defiantly standing up to death or to life - this was rappers shutting out all other people out before gleefully submitting themselves to fantasies of their own down and global decay that film director George Romero would cream over.
The mastermind of the group, The Undertaker, was better known as Stesasonic’s Prince Paul: the other members included Rzarector (RZA from Wu-Tang), Grym Reaper (Poetic from Too Poetic) and Gatekeeper (Frukwan, also ex-Stesasonic). But the crew’s supergroup status didn’t stop them pushing out into bold new areas of Hip-Hop territory on Niggamortis.
It’s Prince Paul’s clear frustration at the collapse of his Doo Dew label that accounts for the album’s sheer darkness, and blackest of all is “1-8000 Suicide”, a tormented tale of death wishes coming true that still makes you wince every time its Hammond-in-hell riff comes blowing in. As such a bizarrely pan-genre act, mixing the sonics of hardcore rap with the imagery of death metal, Gravediggaz mad a lot of converts to Hip-Hop in the mid-nineties, especially among metal fans and rockers. Those converts would go on to make Eminem a star and Necro and underground hero. Many of the backpacking generation started here.
Gravediggaz, Hip-Hop Classics in Aside 
